when we first called florida for al gore, i got a call instantly from the bush white house down in texas and from karl rove who went on the air and said, that's not what we're hearing down there and i have a high regard for karl rove's ability to count votes and lay the ground on aelects day going into that night and i turned to tim russert, my late and beloved colleague and said, we have a problem here, i think, and they began to do the double-check, i think, and we were into a long, difficult process that winds up in the u.s. supreme court and i had never been through anything like that before and i hope never to go through it again and, by the way, to be perfectly walkish for a moment, i think it cries out for election reform in this country. and it's uneven rules from state to state to state and if nothing else we should have faith in the integrity of our election system. >> i completely agree. let's turn to barack obama. how good of a president do you think he has been so far? do you think he could get better, do you think? has he been more on balance as a success than a failure? >>